Most of us probably remember the recent flap about the "spiritual fitness test" that the US military tried to implement. Seems they're as clueless as ever about atheism: now they're saying that it's a warning sign for suicide.

WTF? Did they just pull that out of their collective arse? What did they base such a conclusion on... especially since one might assume believers should naturally be committing suicide right and left to get to heaven and be free of this sinful world they are forced by their perfect omnimax skygod to live in?!?!?!

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If xian hell really exists, the stench of the burning billions of us should be a constant, putrid reminder to the handful of heavenward xians how loving their god is. - neopagan

To be fair to them, I think they may be half right. They talk about "Lack or loss of spiritual faith" as being indicators for suicide.

"Lack of", I agree with everyone here, is not an indicator for the reasons given.

But "Loss of" - particularly sudden or rapid - I could see as being a valid indicator. Someone who has held a god belief for a long time, and who sees the things a serving soldier would see, who rapidly questions and loses his faith in an environment where they have easy access to weapons....yes, I WOULD put that on my list of things to watch for.

When Holy Joe the PFC hurls his Bible away and starts to ask "what is the point?", then yes - that IS something his CO needs to take notice of.

Indeed. The problem is that belief is considered axiomatic - it's something that everyone supposedly has, so lacking it must indicate something wrong, at least according to their logic. Either that, or they've watched Star Wars one too many times.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

The correlation between religiosity and suicide is very difficult to see. In fact, it is so difficult that it probably does not exist. If you look at [wiki]List of countries by suicide rate [/wiki] you will see the apparent randomness.

Suicide is linked to depression and depression has many causes.

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Nobody says “There are many things that we thought were natural processes, but now know that a god did them.”

AverageMoe, comparing Japan and South Korea, can we conclude from the statistics given below (with references) two things:1) That Christianity increases suicide rates?2) That having no religion decreases suicide rates?

Well, if we are lucky we will have another war soon to provide a death wish opportunity for our troops. Syria is a mess. Just what we need to get involved in. After all, corporate America gets rich off of war.

Yeah look I think atheist soldiers are a real risk in many ways - I mean where will they get their absolute morals from?For example: How would they know to bury their poop in desert? Nobody wants to risk Yahweh getting cranky over soiled sandals when snooping around the camp at night

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Deuteronomy 23:14 'For Yahweh your God moves about the camp to protect you and put your enemies at your mercy. Yahweh must not see anything indecent there or he will desert you.'